


take care

by Ashling



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Cause I say so, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other, Polyamory, are you Soft? do you enjoy getting hurt? then boy do I have the fic for you!, everyone is bi, fuck I love them all so so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-09-30 09:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17221157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: The daisies do actually work.But before that, there's some pain.





	take care

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IndigoNight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/gifts).



Amidst all the noise and dust and chaos, the shouting and the rubble, Eddie and Venom hear Anne shouting for them, and a few seconds later, they climb up the rubble beside her.

She points at something poking out from the rubble, a limp hand with a cheap black plastic watch and the white cuff of a lab coat covering the wrist. They don't ask how she knows. They just start lifting.

The clinic used to be an old place, historical, a solid structure of stone. It takes them a few minutes to clear away the first few chunks of debris away from Dan. As soon as they do, Anne's clambering down beside him, hand to his cheek, murmuring,  _ hey, hey, hey. _

Dan's breathing is fast and shaky and shallow. One of his eyes is swollen shut, but the other opens, and he tries to smile with it, with his bloody lips, as best as he can. "Hey," he rasps. And then, to Eddie, over Anne's shoulder: "Sorry we missed dinner."

**It is fine,** Venom says, as Eddie looks through their milky eyes and tries not to panic, tries to find a good angle, a way to make this work, something he can leverage to get this fallen chunk of stone off Dan's legs. The thing is, they've tossed cars before, but cars are mostly aluminum and air, three thousand pounds, maybe. Fuck. Yeah, he's panicking. This is a good two thousand pounds more than they've ever tried to lift.

Except now Anne's looking up at them, Dan's head in her hands, her own face streaked with tears, eyes expectant, so they reach down, dig their claws in under some decorative stonework, set their rows of teeth on teeth, and lift as hard as they can.

The stone doesn't rise. It shifts a little to the left, and underneath it, Dan begins to scream. 

They stop at once and Dan subsides into sobs. He presses into Anne's hand and tries to catch his breath, but it's short and hitching and desperate, small hurt sounds bubbling up in the back of his throat. 

Eddie thinks he might throw up. "I'm sorry, I can't," he says.

**We cannot.**

The sounds of rescue workers arriving, sirens and shouting, and Anne murmuring comfort are not enough to completely cover the sounds Dan is making.

Then Anne speaks. "Do you remember Riot?"

Eddie tries to understand. "It's dead, it can't—"

"You were inside it," Anne cuts in. "And Venom, at the same time. And Drake, all four of you, one body. You looked bigger than you were before, before I tore you apart."

**Yes,** Venom hisses, yanking Eddie forward and darting a tentacle out of his arm to slide along Anne's. It moves slowly at first, and then faster, blackness engulfing her as she steps close and closes her eyes. This time, it's as bad as it gets, as confusing, as unsteady, as terrifying: three minds at loose ends, emotions mixed, memories uncertain, senses blurry. Their body seems uncomfortable, always shifting a little here and there, Venom stretched thin. But when they open their eyes, they are bigger than before, taller. More afraid. Fear is the strongest emotion; it runs through them like a vein of metal in the earth gone molten and that makes everything clear.

"On three," Anne says, moving their tongue thick and strange, "We are lifting. This  _ fucking _ stone. One. Two—"

The stone lifts. Slow, but it lifts. They manage to lift up one side of it until it's at an angle that frees Dan's red, mangled legs. Then they shove their shoulder underneath the stone to hold it steady, bend slightly, and lift him up as easy as if he was a doll. They walk away from the stone, and it thuds down behind them as they sink to their knees. 

"Let me out," Anne says, and then she's slipping out of them and scrambling down the rubble, shouting for help.

"There's no time," Eddie calls after her.

She turns on him, angry almost. "Then what?" None of them have looked directly at Dan's legs, including Dan himself, who has his eyes shut tight, his fingers digging into Eddie's shoulder. 

**We saved Eddie when he was dying. We can do it again.**

Dan opens his eyes. "So I  _ am  _ dying," he rasps, teeth set hard and cheeks still wet with tears, trying to smile like it's all a joke anyway. 

"No," says Eddie. The black tentacle slips from his chest, comes out the neck of his hoodie, and runs over Dan's knuckles.

"Venom won't hurt you," Anne says. She walks back towards them now, and there's hope on her face.

_ I promise,  _ Eddie's about to add, but Dan cuts in with, "I know," lets go of Eddie, and grabs Venom. 

Feeling Venom leave feels like being submerged in a pool of ice, or being drained of blood, but at least Eddie can also feel Dan relaxing into him, breathing deeper. Once Venom is entirely within Dan, it envelops him, and Eddie has the strangest experience of holding Venom for the first time wholly outside of his own body. Then Venom disappears back inside Dan, and underneath Dan's ragged, bloodstained clothes, he's perfectly whole again, skin smooth.

Anne kneels beside them and leans down, Dan reaches up a bit, and they kiss like it's the end of the world. To be fair, it nearly was.

Eddie averts his eyes, and even then he can see, through the tears in Dan's jeans, the faint glimmers of Venom running across his skin, like ripples of dark color, the way that Eddie's seen before on his own skin when he and Venom—He swallows hard, unsure. "Should I, um." He doesn't even know how to finish that sentence.

He doesn't have to. Anne reaches for him and puts her hand on his cheek, smudged a little with blood, and Venom flows out of Dan, through her, into Eddie. It feels warm and safe and suddenly Eddie feels sure, even though he doesn't quite know what he feels sure about. Anne brushes her thumb along Eddie's jaw, gentle, and then they all break away. 

"Thank you," Dan says. It's in Eddie's direction, but it's not to Eddie.

**You are extremely welcome.**

Dan gathers himself up and stands, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve and looking around. "I'll see you at home," he says, after a second. "Don't wait up." Carefully, very carefully, he begins to make his way down the mass of rubble.

"Where the hell are you going?" Anne calls after him.

Dan gestures at the people below, the ambulances, stretchers, firemen running back and forth. “I’m a doctor, and there's patients down there,” he calls back. “I took an oath.” 

Anne and Eddie and Venom watch him go. 

**We could help,** Venom says.  **Then Dan would not have to work and we could all go home together.**

"Any wounded person that sees you is going to scream their head off," Anne says. "And even with the moral complications of that aside, we're not going down there. The police would shoot at you, and the last thing anyone needs is a hundred ricocheting bullets in an emergency."

**We could heal them all.** There's a hint of impatience in Venom's voice.  **They would shoot at us for that?**

"They're the police." Anne gets to her feet and holds out a hand to them. "Come on. We're stronger when it's the three of us, and I'm a lawyer."

They take her hand.

"You're a lawyer and what, you took an oath too?" says Eddie.

"No, I'm a lawyer, so I've got to do some penance."

With all three of them, it's easy, at first. They stand quietly and sift through the sound until they find someone calling for help near the top of the heap of rubble, and they begin to climb. From then on, it's the world's most dangerous game of Jenga, but it's something they're good at; they carry each person down carefully and Dan runs up to them to receive the patient. All the emergency workers give them a wide berth, but nobody shoots at them, which is good enough.  

That's good, for a while. Evening begins to fall, and soon it seems that they've saved everyone there is to save; they try to go by smell, but they only find dead bodies.

And then there's a call coming from beyond the burning mess on the east side of the mountain of rubble.

**We don't like fire,** Venom says.

"Nobody does," Anne says. "But I doubt there's a fire hose long enough for this, and we don't have the time."

For a moment, all three of them pace the border of the flames, calculating.

"It's mostly heat, not much weight," Eddie says. "You don't need to be here."

"Do you remember what happened the last time you kept me out of your plans and tried to do everything on your own?"

"Okay, but this time I'd be doing it with your knowledge."

"No, we do it together."

**Together is good.**

"Can't argue against democracy, Eddie."

"Says the lawyer."

They stop pacing.

**Toss those two pieces and it's a clear path.**

"On three."

They do manage to save the trapped boy, and after that, it's over. Their hands are useless anyways, at that point.

**Sea monster?** says Venom, because that's the usual protocol.

"I could use a swim," Anne says.

They lope along the streets of San Francisco, stopping at red lights. Still nobody tries to shoot them, which is quite nice. There's a lot of honking and screaming, which is less nice. But they're too tired to figure out the elegant solution to anonymity, and it's yelling all the way down until they can sprint out onto a pier and dive. 

Five minutes later, Anne swims up onto a beach, followed by Eddie, with Venom hidden inside. They both look a complete wreck, but there's nobody on the beach this time of night that's sober enough to notice. Eddie can feel that Venom is already asleep inside him. 

"Now what?" says Anne, sitting down heavily on the wet sand.

"I'm getting us both a Lyft." Eddie reaches into his back pocket and takes out a waterproof plastic container. From that, he takes out his phone, burned hands clumsy, but just good enough.

"Our clothes. Your phone. What the hell." Anne gestures instead of making full sentences, but she's still doing better than Eddie, who's lying down in the sand, ignoring various things he hopes are just cigarette butts and stones.

"I think Venom keeps them inside of it."

"How?"

"I failed organic chemistry in college. I don't know. We can ask Dan later."

Anne peeks at the phone. "Hey, one car."

"What?"

"We only need one car. You're coming home with me."

 

Home is a light on in the kitchen, a smell of In-N-Out, and the daisies Eddie brought a few hours before placed carefully in a vase, but wilting nonetheless. Home is Dan curled up on the sofa like he's a cat, the cat curled up on Dan like he's a sofa. Warm and dry. 

"Let him sleep," Eddie murmurs, and Anne silently agrees, taking down the first aid kit from its old familiar place above the fridge. 

Their burns are twin, fingertips mostly escaped, angry red strips of flesh nearly raw cutting across the center of their palms. It looks ugly, but Eddie figures it's not so bad. Can't be as bad as the feeling of getting burned, right? He grits his teeth and allows Anne to lead him to the sink, but the first trickle of cool water hurts so much he jerks back with a clear,  _ "Fuck." _

**STOP,** Venom snarls, and half a dozen dark tendrils spring from Eddie's arms in threat. 

Anne is too exhausted to care, or else she knows there's no threat to her at all. In any case, her voice is gentle. "I'm sorry I woke you up, but you don't want him getting an infection, do you? It will hurt him worse than this. We're on the same side here."

Eddie can feel Venom thinking about it, and then Venom grunts,  **Fine.**

"What are you doing?" That's Dan, from the sofa. Mr. Belvedere, annoyed at being woken by all this noise, meows loudly in protest, leaps off Dan, and trots away. Dan uncurls. "I left the lidocaine out for you. You should start with that. Here, I'll do it."

The lidocaine cream does dull the burn considerably, and then Dan bandages them up, his own hands deft and cool. Eddie tries to ignore the proximity, but he's so tired. He's so tired, and it's so hard to ignore.

"We should go," Eddie says, once Dan is done. He's leaning on the kitchen countertop, trying as hard as he can to keep his eyes open.

"Where are we going?" says Anne.

"Venom and I, I mean."

"You'll fall asleep and crash your motorcycle," says Dan, "And then all my good work will be for nothing. Sofa."

**Sofa is good.**

"I'm fine to drive," Eddie says, except then he does end up on the sofa, and once he's there, it's so soft that there seems little point in protesting.

  
  
  


Eddie wakes to  _ it's okay, you're okay,  _ and a hand on his shoulder. 

"Mm?" goes Dan on his right. Eddie squints down at him in the darkness of the living room and finds that Dan's curled up next to him on the sofa along with Mr. Belvedere.

"Nightmare," says Anne, who is apparently sitting on the other side of him. "Everything's all right. Go back to sleep."

Dan turns over, and does.

"What time is it?" Eddie says.

Anne leans over and scrabbles around on the coffee table till she finds her phone. All three of them blink at the sudden light. "Five in the morning. Go back to sleep."

**Food,** Venom says, inside Eddie's head. This is as nice as it's ever gotten, because the way that they're feeling, on any other day Eddie would be awoken to  **FOOD. FOOD. FOOD.**

"Yeah, I think so," says Eddie, getting up.

"You can both talk open now if you like," says Anne, leaning back into the sofa. 

**HUNGRY,** says Venom, and Dan jerks awake again with a: "Shit!"

"Help yourself, and bring some back," Anne says.

Eddie stubs his toe on an open door and swears quietly when the fridge handle hits his bandaged palm, but he ends up successfully retrieving a tub of guacamole and two spoons.

"You're bringing all my bad habits back," Anne says, but then she's tucking her cold toes under his thigh and eating guacamole straight out of the tub.

Venom, impatient with the size of Eddie's spoon, improvises a ladle-sized tentacle and stuffs Eddie's mouth with it. Dan, without comment, takes the extra spoon and helps himself.

When the tub is empty, they all look at it.

"We probably shouldn't open another," Anne says.

"Do you have beer?" Eddie says.

"I'll get it." Dan gently deposits Mr. Belvedere on Eddie's lap and pads off into the kitchen.

Mr. Belvedere looks intently at Eddie. "Hello again," he says. The cat hisses.

Venom hisses back, with considerably more tongue. 

The cat looks to Anne.

"Play nice," she says.

  
  
  


A few beers and some microwaved leftover pasta later, Eddie is drifting off to the twin sounds of Mr. Belvedere purring away in Dan's lap and Venom making that sort of bubbling noise that it makes when it's full and content. But then Dan says, "Hey, did you want this?" and hands Eddie a small notepad.

Eddie flushes. "Yeah. Thanks." He shoves it in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie.

"No problem."

Eddie hopes that simply sitting there will make the tension dissipate. It doesn't. If anything, all three of them are sitting awkwardly for the first time in several hours. He can feel it in the air. Venom has stopped making that bubbling noise, too.

"You read it, right?" he finally says.

Dan looks guilty. "I didn't mean to. It was open, and I thought it might be Anne's. I didn't get any further than the first few lines, if that helps."

It doesn't help. 

"Should I go?"

**We.**

"Should we go?"

"You don't have to," Anne says, and Eddie turns to look at her. "We could get a bigger bed."

She says it steadily, but he can tell that she's no longer too exhausted to care. She cares.

Eddie looks from one of them to the other. "Did you talk about this?"

Dan's blushing probably worse than Eddie. "Yeah, man. I—" He manages to look Eddie in the eye for only a second. "Yeah."

Eddie doesn't know what to say. Thankfully, that's not a problem Venom ever has.

**And us?**

"Both of you," Anne says, and shit, she has no problem looking them in the eye, and that's the moment that Eddie realizes this is actually happening.

**THE DAISIES WORKED,** Venom crows.  

"What now?" says Dan.

**Human courtship rituals include offerings of foliage to the beloved. We saw it on the Hallmark Channel.**

"We were gonna ask you guys tonight," Eddie says, "But then Dan was late, and the bomb, and everything else."

"So are we asking you to—or are you—" Dan gestures ineffectively.

"I think we will get a bigger bed," says Anne. "And more guacamole."

**Tomorrow?** says Venom hopefully.

Eddie looks around. It's the strangest thing, the bottles and spoons and empty tub, the forks and bowl, their clothes still smelling of smoke. Anne's toes are digging into his thigh, and though Dan's not touching him, he's so close that Mr. Belvedere's tail is draped over Eddie's other leg. Venom is making a high-pitched, coaxing sound like some kind of a bird. Someone tried to blow up Dan, or his workplace anyway, and Eddie's definitely going to call in sick tomorrow and they'll all have nightmares for the rest of their lives and it's a mess.

It's a mess. They're a mess.

"Tomorrow it is."

  
  
  


Tomorrow they’ll do everything. Tomorrow Anne will take Venom out on a jog and find the bomber and have a breakfast of him, and Dan in the meantime will putter around the kitchen until Eddie wakes up to the smell of good things frying. Dan will be sitting on the counter, laughing at some dumb joke Eddie made five minutes ago, when Eddie leans over and kisses him. Tomorrow, that will seem all right, allowed, and even though it's allowed, it'll still be electric. Anne will kiss differently when she gets back, all domestic familiarity, fingertips warm and welcome in Eddie's hair, until she tilts her head back a bit and says, "I thought you had more tongue than that?" Which will hit right in the gut, and  **Yes,** they'll show her. And so tomorrow they'll find a bigger bed, and wrestle it into Dan's Toyota, and haul it up the stairs, and barely manage to get it in the front door. And they'll put that bed to good use, tomorrow.

Tonight, though. Tonight they simply fall back asleep.


End file.
